Friday, April 17, 2020 Game Recap and Discussion (SPOILERS)

[floridagator]

What was the hint I was missing?

None, really. That FJ was more YEKIOYD than most, but it's relatively well known in history.
for DDs
Said Apollo for Helios, I'm counting it.

Apollo was undoubtedly the expected response - Alex said "We'll accept that" for Helios. I wish Alex would remember to follow that sentence by telling us what they were looking for.

To be fair to Alex, it seemed like Xiaoke's efforts to keep the game moving upon having her response accepted prevented him from being able to follow up.

Alex is the star of the show and formerly its producer. He has been in his current position now for 36 years. It is up to him to decide when and how the game will move and how or if he will follow up. There are other people higher than Alex who will decide what responses will be accepted.

Xiaoke's role in this is much more similar to that of a chicken at a chicken dinner.

[davey]

What was the hint I was missing?

None, really. That FJ was more YEKIOYD than most, but it's relatively well known in history.
for DDs
Said Apollo for Helios, I'm counting it.

Apollo was undoubtedly the expected response - Alex said "We'll accept that" for Helios. I wish Alex would remember to follow that sentence by telling us what they were looking for.
The only other European I could think of who might fit the FJ was Barbarossa, and he was German...

I noticed that too - they usually pin the gods and goddesses to Greek or Roman, which always messes with my head. I always have to take a beat before responding.

But the weird thing is Phaethon and Helios are both Greek, while Apollo seems to come from both Greek and Roman origins. I think the closer equivalnet to Helios in Roman mythology is Sol, but I could be wrong.

Either way, Phaethon's father seems to be Helios, and NOT Apollo, as far as I can tell, so I don't know why Alex had to take a beat. I'll admit, I couldn't parse out Greek/Roman in time, but I did say "Helios" simply because it seemed closer linguistically to Phaethon than Apollo.

It's not hard to find references to Phaethon as Apollo's son-https://www.greekmythology.com/Myths/Fi ... ethon.html
and other references explain that Helios and Apollo "became almost synonymous" in later Greek mythology-
https://www.ancient.eu/Helios/

[seaborgium]

Said Apollo for Helios, I'm counting it.

Apollo was undoubtedly the expected response - Alex said "We'll accept that" for Helios. I wish Alex would remember to follow that sentence by telling us what they were looking for.

To be fair to Alex, it seemed like Xiaoke's efforts to keep the game moving upon having her response accepted prevented him from being able to follow up.

Alex is the star of the show and formerly its producer. He has been in his current position now for 36 years. It is up to him to decide when and how the game will move and how or if he will follow up. There are other people higher than Alex who will decide what responses will be accepted.

Xiaoke's role in this is much more similar to that of a chicken at a chicken dinner.

I specifically worded my post to avoid judgments in my assessment. Alex doesn't do his job in a vacuum, similar to how an orchestra conductor needs to react to the musicians along with directing them. There's a reason the contestant coordinators run the auditions the way they do, including the mock game where they get would-be contestants used to ringing in, responding, and then maintaining the rhythm by selecting the next clue when (if) they're told they're correct. Xiaoke was doing what got her on the show in the first place. Ideally a contestant's rhythm allows space for the host to interject as necessary, but I can't fault her for failing to account for a non-standard interjection. She heard she was right, she picked another clue; that's what you're supposed to do.

And according to their respective announcers, Art Fleming was the star of the show, while Alex is the host.

[MarkBarrett]

Today's rerun gets a bump.

[seaborgium]

The contest for second place could have gone either way with Tyler & Xiaoke close yet Xiaoke did not go for nearly enough in the FJ! round to try to get it.

For reference:

Code: Select all

Tyler:   200 14600 14800 29400
Nibir: 22195 27595 49790 77385
Xiaoke:  800 11600 12400 24000

Nibir: Bet less than $20,389 to keep Tyler locked out.
Tyler: Bet $9,201 to cover Xiaoke.
Xiaoke: You can finish ahead of Tyler if he's wrong. Bet less than $6,800.

Tyler bet $5,200, while Xiaoke bet $1,600. Just now I did the math and saw that if Xiaoke had gone the maximum according to my recommendations, she would have gotten her total to $19,199. Granted, Tyler did go for a tidy round number, but I wonder if, after seeing Xiaoke win with a small bet from third on a triple stumper in her SF, he made a conscious effort to lower his wager by figuring out the most she was likely to wager and covering that with his bet.

And as far as Xiaoke's wager goes, Tyler's minimum wager to cover what Xiaoke's maximum bet seemed to be would have been $4,400 or $4,401. If he had missed, that would have taken his cumulative total down to $10,400 or $10,399. Xiaoke's bet ensures she'd stay above that, with $10,800.

The way I see their wagers, Tyler correctly guessed that Xiaoke would bet less than $6,800, while Xiaoke correctly guessed that Tyler would bet more than $4,400 (each with a cushion of a few hundred dollars).